Edu4Change

Edu4change: to upgrade the quality of education in developing countries.

By the end of 2009, Woord en Daad and Driestar Educatief entered into a strategic alliance to contribute to upgrading the quality of schools and the educational sectors in developing countries. This cooperation is featured by reciprocity between people in the North and the South.

The cooperation between Driestar Educatief and Woord en Daad is complementary. The substantive expertise in education especially comes from Driestar Educatief, whereas Woord en Daad contributes its experience in the field of education in developing countries and in cooperating with partners in other cultures.

A. How to understand and support children that are in need of help.
B. Parents as partners
C. The art of teaching
D. Educational Leadership
E. Early Grade Reading

Contents

Each course consists of a training manual for the participants and a trainer guide for the trainer, for five days of training. For the implementation, a train-the-trainer approach is used. In the Edu4Change program teachers learn to use activating and child-centered teacher strategies, including how to deal with children with special educational needs. Besides that, emphasis is given to the involvement of parents in school as this stimulates children’s learning. Teachers learn how to work on a better relationship with parents and stimulate parents to participate in school activities. A specific training for head-teachers and principals addresses the leadership aspects of sustainable change in the schools. The courses are adjusted to the local context and make use of a competence based approach (including practice descriptions) and case studies. All courses are developed in line with a ‘vision on change’ which stresses the importance of ‘mindset-change’.

Early Grade Reading

The overall performance of children and teachers on respectively reading and teaching of reading in Sierra Leone is too low. This is the result of a baseline research by Edu4change partners (2013). Based upon the baseline Edu4change is working on various interventions to improve the quality of reading education in Sierra Leone.

Language mapping report

Our language mapping report (2016) gives an insight in the language context in and around 20 Mende schools as preparation for an intervention to introduce mother tongue based bilingual education (MTBBE).

Ethiopia

In 2011 and 2012, the course-program has been piloted. In Ethiopia, our partner organization Hope Enterprises runs 6 own (pre-)primary and secondary schools in different areas in the country: Addis Ababa, Dessie, Gambella, Assosa, Roggie and Hirara. Next to these schools, Hope Enterprises also supports children in about 20 government schools in Addis Ababa and Dessie. Partner organization MKC-RDA is linked to the Meserete Kristos Church, and runs different types of projects in mainly rural areas. Woord en Daad is supporting 4 centers for Alternative Basic Education and Functional Adult Literacy in the Jeldu area (near Ambo). At present, Edu4change is implemented in the ‘own schools and centers’ of Hope Enterprises and the Woord en Daad-supported program of MKC-RDA. In the coming period this will be scaled-up to other government schools and programs supported by other donors.

Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, Edu4change is also implemented in cooperation with two partner organizations. CTF is an NGO with an education programme in Grafton (about 5 schools), a former refugee camp near Freetown, and in the Northern province (about 2 schools). CTF provides different types of support to schools in the community, e.g. infrastructure, training and materials. EFSL operates in the whole country (266 schools of members). The support of Woord en Daad focuses on the education program in the Pujehun region – with community schools and teacher training. Currently the Edu4change courses are given to staff members from the programs of CTF (mainly Grafton, to be extended to the Northern region schools) and EFSL (mainly Freetown and Pujehun, but there is more need among member organizations).

In 2013 we are working on a continuation of the program in Sierra Leone and Ethiopia. Based on the discussions and input of partner organizations, we focus on the elaboration of:

It is expected that the developed materials and (contextualized) approach are relevant for use in other developing countries as well. Future perspective is that we offer this package to a broader group of partners and schools.